Field of the Invention
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to circuit interrupters and, more particularly, to a metering apparatus that is usable with a circuit interrupter. The disclosed and claimed concept further relates to a metering system and an electrical distribution system utilizing a plurality of such metering apparatuses.
Description of the Related Art
Numerous types of circuit interrupters, such as would include circuit breakers, are known in the art. Circuit breakers typically are employed to interrupt current to a circuit during various predefined overcurrent conditions, under-voltage conditions, and/or other conditions.
As is generally understood, a circuit breaker can either be in an ON condition, an OFF condition, or a TRIPPED condition. While the condition of such a circuit breaker typically can be discerned upon a visual inspection of the breaker, such a visual inspection often is impractical. Also, the determination of certain operational parameters of the breaker such as current flow and the like can be cumbersome to determine.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,643,501 describes a metering apparatus which connects directly to a breaker and detects one or more operational parameters of the breaker. The metering apparatus can than communicate the status of the breaker and/or one or more operational parameters of the breaker to another device. While such metering apparatus provides a solution which improves upon the prior art, the use of more than one of such metering apparatus in connection with more than one breaker within a breaker panel can be cumbersome due to the wiring connections required by each metering apparatus. It thus would be desirable to provide a way of overcoming these and other shortcomings of known circuit breakers and metering apparatus.